About Me

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Skin deep

You may be judged
by its colour; but it is also your window into the world of emotions

Skin. Was there ever a
word with more resonance? I don’t think so. Think of the many ways we use it in
our everyday vocabulary. I made it by the skin of my teeth. It’s getting under
my skin. Beauty is only skin-deep (or not, if you are in a particularly
profound mood). She’s only interested in saving her own skin. It’s no skin off
my nose. He really does have a thick skin. I nearly jumped out of my skin. It
is all about being comfortable in your own skin.

I could go on but then I
would run out of space and where would we all be…

There is a good reason
why ‘skin’ resonates so deeply with us. It is the most visible thing about us.
And every day of our lives we are judged by it. The brown man with the backpack
who is pulled out of a security queue at an airport and questioned. The black
man who is perceived as being so scary that people actually cross the road to
avoid him as they walk home at night. The white woman who is leered at on the
streets of an Indian city. Actually, scratch that. Any woman, no matter what
her colour, is guaranteed to be leered at – or worse – on our streets.

But prejudice doesn’t
stop at that. The colour of your skin is also seen as an indicator of your
social and economic status. In India (and elsewhere in the east) a fair complexion
is seen as a badge of pride, a sign that you are rich enough not to have to
brave the sun; dark skin, on the other, marks you out as lowly worker who has
to scorch his skin to earn a living. It is not a coincidence that the Hindu
caste system is classified on the basis of ‘varna’, which loosely translates as
colour.

In the West, on the
other hand, a pale, sun-starved complexion marks you out as poor and
underprivileged. It means that you don’t have the money to lie around at the
pool-side or spend time on the ski slopes to work on your tan. The rich, on the
other hand, take pride in their year-round nutty-brown complexions, which prove
that they can holiday in the sun no matter what the season.

No wonder then that skin-lightening
or ‘fairness’ creams are a multimillion business in the East while the tanning
industry (which takes in everything from tanning sprays to tanning salons)
makes a killing in the West.

Given all this, is it
any surprise that skin is something we obsess about the most? We slather on SPF
50 creams to remain fair and lovely. We spray on tanning lotions to appear brown
and healthy (and wealthy). We wax our skin to look smooth and hairless. We
plump it up with creams, lotions and potions to make it soft and desirable. We
attack it with anti-ageing gels, serums and treatments so that it retains that
youthful gleam just a little bit longer.

But skin is a lot more
than the cover we are judged by. It is also our window to the world of emotion.
We crave the touch of a loving hand, the warm hug of a parent, the passionate
kiss of a lover, the comforting embrace of a spouse as we lie in bed.

We use our skin to feel,
to touch, to taste, to smell. The softness of a baby’s freshly-washed, powdered
body. The feel of an elegant silk shirt as it caresses your body. The sweetness
of the first lychees of the season that leave your tastebuds craving for more.
The smell of petrichor as the first rains hit the parched earth.